Articles by: Judith Harris

  • Life & People

    Dear Babbo Natale

    Naples - This is the quintessential Christmas town, and for many families its Nativity scenes - presepi - represent an accumulation of decades of collecting. By tradition, each child added one figure every year to the presepe.

    With timed lighting and mechanical waterfalls, windmills that urn and woodchoppers who whack at the lumber, the scene expands until it eventually may occupy an entire room in the home.

    During this season (and not only; presepe shops are open year round for tourists) the whole

    street of San Gregorio Armeno, in the heart of old Napoli, is a file of storefronts jammed with Nativity figures. The tradition dates back centuries, although is now somewhat endangered.

    As one man in his sixties told me, "My father was specialized in carving sheep for the presepe. With his wooden sheep he maintained our family and also two widowed aunts."

    Few young people follow in the sheep-carver's footsteps; they would earn too little, and so the figures in this year's presepe du jour, which shows a host of chefs standing in white coats amid foodstuffs, are lovely but are of terra cotta.

    The presepe tradition reached in apex in Naples, capital of the Kingdom of Naples and the Two Cities, in the l8th Century. Supposedly it was to represent Palestine, and was placed in a chapel corner in churches; from there the custom spread into the grander homes. Because no one had ever seen Palestine, what emerged was Naples itself: its shopkeepers, fisherfolk, sturdy aproned women, shepherds and their flocks and, of course, the Christ Child and Holy Family and Three Kings of Orient. Today's popular figures begin with Pope Francis, but there are also President Barack Obama and his wife plus a bevy of Italian politicians, from President Giorgio Napolitano to a shaggy-haired Beppe Grillo and Silvio Berlusconi, this time waving a sign that says, "I'll be back."

    This year Naples had an additional gift from an Babbo Natale: a gala production of Verdi's "Aida", which had its first night December 5 to open the San Carlo Opera Theater season. In the black tie audience was Bernard Osher, 86, an American business tycoon and philanthropist who is an opera lover and among the sponsors of the San Francisco Opera House. Osher, ranked by Forbes as among the 746 wealthiest people in the world a few years back,  sponsored the recent tour of the San Carlo company to San Francisco.

    For the past 28 years Naples has an added Christmas feature: a 24-foot-tall fir tree, this year sent from Normandy, erected in the center of the elegant, turn-of-the-century Galleria Umberto I. Known as the Tree of Desires, this year's is, as ever, a gift from haberdasher Antonio Barbaro. Onto it people attach letters addressed to Father Christmas, aka Babbo Natale. As I stood in the Galleria copying and translating some of the letters from the Italian (a few were in Russian, Portuguese and other languages), people kept coming up and begging scraps of paper upon which to write their Christmas wishes.

    What did they write? Older correspondents begged for jobs. The younger set asked for toys. A remarkable number wanted to be rid of certain politicians. And now, let them speak for themselves.

    "Dear Babbo Natale, fill 2014 with good news. 2013 was a complete washout."

    "Love!" (on a paper napkin)

    "I'd like my life to be full of success and LOTS of love."

    "Help me get a good grade in my psychiometry exam."

    "I want nothing material but for once, for everything to go just right because I've had enough of hard times."

    "Help me to go on doing yoga for my whole life."

    "Dear Babbo Natale, Help me beat cancer, give it instead to all the politicians beginning with [politician's name] so they will know what it's like to walk through the valley of fire. I'm 50 years old and don't want to die just yet."

    "Make [several finance ministers' names] live for one year on a social pension."

    "Help me find a permanent job." Signed: Luigi

    "I am a professional. Help me find a job within my profession."

    "Please resolve the problem of the restaurant before we have to sell out."

    "Give me the strength to do well at work, in my studies and to be good to those who deserve it."

    "Dear guardian angel, wherever you are, my hand is in yours" (In large printed letters)

    "We want a proper contract for our job"

    "Please give me a happy life"

    "A decent job for Papa"

    "I want some money for a present for my best friend and a job for Mamma." (Signed: Sara)

    "For us it would be enough if our Napoli team could win the championship."

    "A 3-year scholarship to pay for my PhD - all I want to do is to go on studying what I love"

    "Decaduto is not enough" (a reference to Silvio Berlusconi, decaduto- i.e., stripped of his Senate status)

    "Dearest Babbo Natale, Play Station 3 with the game Gran Turismo" (Signed: Daniele, age 7)

    "I would like a year full of surprises. PS Valeria is an idiot [scema]."

    "Please bring us lots of money, we are really really poor." (Signed: Lina, Flora, Pina, Rosa and Roberta)

    "A tablet and a Barbie, I am 6 years old"

    "I hope all will go well for me and that the slut Flora will kick the bucket"

    "Yes, dear Babbo Natale, I'm asking for a ray of hope for myself and for all of us young people. Are we or are we not the future?"

    Indeed. My own wish, written on a scrap of note paper and attached to a twig, was for i-italy to continue to grow and to engage its readers and viewers. Merry Christmas to all from me, Judith Harris.
  • Op-Eds

    Renzi Opens to Movimento 5 Stelle


    ROME - Those who voted last week in assemblies all over Italy for Matteo Renzi as general secretary of the Partito Democratico (PD) wanted a whirlwind of change, and they are already starting to get it. This is not the same thing as liking it, however. Renzi's trumpeted agenda begins with obtaining a new electoral law to replace the despised "Porcellum," as its many enemies call it. This "porker" or "pigsty" law, promoted by Silvio Berlusconi, took effect in December of 2005, and has had radical consequences on the Italian polity.
     
    By its terms voters cannot choose their own candidates; that is the job of the party bosses in a smoke-filled room. Also, in a national election the political party which comes out ahead of the others, even when it has today's typically narrow margin of votes, perhaps as low as 30%, walks off with a comfortable majority in the Chamber of Deputies and 55% in the Senate, where the voting is already skewed by being calculated on the basis of the population of the various regions.
     
    An obvious alternative to the Porcellum would be, French style, to have a run-off between the top two leading candidates--some suggest between the two leading coalitions--, but it is equally obvious that until now the parties lusting for power, which is what they do by definition, have chosen for the past eight years not to make changes because each has hoped it will be the one to walk off with the family jewels--that is, that majority freebie donation.
     
    Renzi is having none of this - and is scaring the old pols witless. Why? Because he seems willing to accept votes on this in Parliament from any quarter, including from the aggressive forces of Silvio Berlusconi and of Beppe Grillo. The headlines tell the story: "Hoist on their own petards, panic on the left, in Parliament the Forza Italia-Cinque Stelle axis is born," trumpeted the right-wing daily Il Giornale.  The moderate daily La Stampa of Turin acknowledges the new situation: "Palazzo Chigi [the Italian White House] is alarmed by Renzi's accelerating."
     
    Alarm or not at Renzi's stepping on the gas, the feeling is that, unless a drastically reformed election law is passed by early January, the result may well be a government crisis that could open the floodgates to early elections even though Premier Letta's cabinet just won a vote of confidence on Dec. 11. Complicating the issue is that on Dec. 4 the Constitutional Court declared some of the main tenets of the Porcellum unconstitutional, particularly because it fails to allow voters to select individual candidates by name (preferenze). This gave renegade former comic Beppe Grillo and his Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) the opportunity to broadcast that a large number of parliamentarians are actually in office illegally.
     
    Not that anyone paid much attention; Renzi's implicit opening to the M5S appears of greater concern to the opinion makers here than the court's decision. "The Movimento Cinque Stelle has already been let out of the box," warns Marcello Sorgi of La Stampa of Turin. "In a legislature whose future is uncertain, the balance of power is precarious and must of necessity be dealt with."
     
    This flies in the face of the fact that Renzi--whose election as PD general secretary is expected to be ratified in an assembly in Milan on Sunday--had only recently agreed with President Giorgio Napolitano and Premier Enrico Letta to do his best to avoid early elections until 2015.
     
    Showing he means business, Renzi has also been busy on another awkward front, calling for the elimination, not only the nationwide network of provincial governments, but also of the Senate itself, leaving Italy with a monocameral legislature. That surviving Chamber of Deputies too would be seriously reduced, if Renzi has his way. 
     
    Premier Letta, who is Renzi's political partner in the PD, plainly does not want Renzi stealing the show by coopting daily headlines and so trumped him by announcing Dec. 12 that political parties should no longer by publicly funded as of 2017. This had been one of Renzi's battle cries, but Letta's announcement beat him to the draw. It also caught the Grillo guerrilla fighters unprepared, who suggested lamely yesterday that, if the PD is against public funding, it can just return the funds to the sender.
     
    In the background are loud and disturbing noises. Berlusconi, who must still carry out nine months of social service or accept house arrest as part of his conviction for tax fraud, has announced that, if he is sent to jail (which is most unlikely), there will be "revolution" in Italy. In effect, there is a sort of revolution, but not Berlusconi's. Instead, in scattered piazzas and streets large numbers of Italians are demonstrating against the government--all governments--and tossing smoke bombs and breaking streetfront shop windows to show their wrath.
     
    The unrest on the streets is building up, and risks turning seriously nasty. Police are occasionally baffled as to what to do. Taunted to stop hiding their faces behind helmets, a few policemen bared their faces, bringing down on their heads problems with their superiors. And when an attractive young female demonstrator kissed a policeman's helmet, she was charged with sexual violence.
     
     
  • Op-Eds

    Avalanche for Renzi and for Democracy


    ROME - Given the disaffection in the Italian electorate, not a single pundit dared to predict that two million people would turn out for Sunday's Partito Democratico (PD) primaries to elect a new general secretary. So guess what: a stunningly large number, almost three million, defied chill weather and Christmas shopping traffic jams to stand in line to vote in the 8,400 impromptu polling stations set up by volunteers all over Italy. As predicted, Matteo Renzi, the 38-year-old, fast-talking mayor of Florence since 2009, won the three-way race, but here too the surprise was that he claimed the support of over two out of three voters, or, with 1.7 million votes to his credit, almost 70%. It was, as the media here are saying, "an avalanche," "a tsunami."
     
    Already today Renzi has taken the party reins from general secretary Guglielmo Epiphani, who has been babysitting the fragmented since last February, and this afternoon announced his new group of supporters. Renzi's chief rival candidate Gianni Cuperlo, who represented the past twenty-years of continuity of the PD and its deeper origins in the old Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI), claimed only 18.2%. With 13.4%, the younger PD outsider-intellectual, Pippo Civati, fared almost as well. Support for both came primarily in the North of Italy.
     
    But there are also two other winners. The first and most important is Italian democracy itself. The sheer size of the turnout showed that, however frustrated and disappointed the electorate, vast numbers still believe enough in the system to take the time to vote. This is important in a nation whose democratic traditions date back little more than half a century.
    The third victory is that this is at the very least a harbinger of generational change. Renzi's triumph turns the party's back to the old nomenklature and, by handing power over to a new generation of under-forties, launches the reconstruction of a non-ideological progressive party on the Italian left. "It's up to a new generation now," Renzi said in his acceptance speech, "and this time the changes will be real."
     
    These real change are afoot not only in the PD. By coincidence, more or less, the ever truculent Northern League, whose newest battle is to have the Veneto Region secede from Italy, also held an all-party election Sunday in which its founding father, Umberto Bossi, was trounced by a younger rival,  Matteo Salvini, 40. Bossi, who has suffered a stroke, has been in some disgrace for financial scandals and for his son's payment of E230,000 ($315,000) for a university degree from Albania, necessary in order to be given a well-paid job in the local regional bureaucracy. (That financial skullduggery, incidentally, has infuriated and mortified Albanian educational authorities.) Salvini is, to put it mildly, eccentric; one of his more bizarre proposals, dating from a campaign in Milan in 2009, was to have subway coaches reserved for the exclusive use of Milanese citizens and women - that is, where immigrants could not ride.
     
    Reaction in the international press was swift, and the Renzi crowd yesterday was boasting at all the world media masters who were phoning him but not being received. For the Wall Street Journal Renzi is the new star of the Italian left. Reuters: "a charismatic" leader but one who is "brash." In addition, he has come to victory on an anti-establishment ticket but he is now the establishment, as Mattia Guidi has pointed out in the on-line version of the Policy Network. If nothing else he will extract a high price from Letta for loyalty - and it is no secret that Renzi's next goal is, himself, to become prime minister.
     
    As the outgoing secretary Epiphani commented pointedly, Renzi's victory is "an unequivocal signal that he will have a strong democratic mandate and great responsibility." This raises the very serious question of what now - what of his relations with PD Premier Enrico Letta? Letta was careful not to choose among the trio of candidates and, when Renzi trumped the other two, Letta promised the two would "work together in a team spirit that will be fruitful and useful to the country and to the center-left." However, Renzi is on record saying that he will not tolerate the "inciucio" (the word for piglets huddled together beneath the belly of the sow). The piglets in question are the coalition government headed by Letta, but in which Angelino Alfano, the new head of the Partito della Liberta' (PdL), represents the right wing. But do not expect clarity: not long ago it was Renzi who was winking an eye at Silvio Berlusconi's right wing. And, speaking of Berlusconi and piglets, that former Premier's newest bid is to join forces in some as yet undefined way with Beppe Grillo's ever noisy Movimento Cinque Stelle. " The best is yet to come," Renzi said this morning. Well, maybe, but hold onto your hats - the fat lady has not yet sung.
     
  • Facts & Stories

    Renzi and the PD Take Center-Stage


    ROMA - The now splintered conservative parties represented by Silvio Berlusconi and his former alter ego Angelino Alfano slip at least momentarily into the background this week as the Partito Democratico (PD) finally takes center-stage. Opening December 8, the PD national convention will sanction the election of a new general secretary expected to represent a crucial generational shift away from the old-style politicians of the past. Three candidates are in the running in primaries throughout the country.
     
    Matteo Renzi, 38, is the acknowledged front-runner. Official PD counts put him ahead of all other candidates, with some 47% of the votes in party primaries. The mayor of Florence, Renzi likes to appear in low-slung blue jeans and an open shirt. He has neither national nor international political experience, but is engaging and serious, eloquent and smart and, above all, young and new. Just now he likes to point out that, with Berlusconi out of the way, Premier Enrico Letta is the numerically strong man in the government, with 300 votes in Parliament by comparison with Angelino Alfano's 30. As pundits here put it, Letta no longer has Berlusconi as an alibi for failing to address crucial reforms. 
     
    Renzi urges Letta to act decisively, for, with Berlusconi out of the government, the PD is now more central to the government and to Letta's cabinet than before. The government , however, now come under attack on two fronts--by Beppe Grillo on the one hand and Berlusconi, "who knows very well how to run an election campaign," on the other. "If the government acts with uncertainty, our march toward new national general elections will turn into a funeral cortege," Renzi predicts. The so-called coalition of the "large understanding'" (as the former coalition with Berlusconi was called) is a thing of the past; and, if Alfano does not like the situation, he is still out-numbered ten to one, says Renzi.
     
    Renzi wants the Letta government to focus upon three objectives: (1) revision of the present, detested election law known as the "Porcellum" to be replaced by a law that will "guarantee bipolarism and governability"; (2) a "job act" that will relaunch employment, including through simplification of the laws governing the work place (read: attack on the unions), and will attract investment; and (3) consider "the soul of the country"--that is, make schools, immigration and civil liberties a priority, including passage of a law permitting civil unions and another outlawing homophobia.
     
    Renzi's principal rival is Gianni Cuperlo, born in Trieste in 1961. By mid-November Cuperlo commanded around 38% of those voting in the PD primaries. After graduating in media studies at DAMS at Bologna University in 1985, Cuperlo cut his teeth in politics, and has never looked back. He was the very last secretary of the Italian Communist party's youth organization (FGCI) and co-authored two books with PD old-timer Massimo D'Alema. Within the PD Cuperlo is reportedly popular with some on its left wing. Over 19,000 Italians follow his tweets at @giannicuperlo, in which he says things like, "We must understand that perhaps we are in the right but not necessarily the best; outside of ourselves there's lots that's good, we must consider it." From another tweet: "Politics must be self-critical, including on the left. We have lost touch with the people too often" (my translations). Ironically, while himself risking charges of being a continuation of the old PCI-PD, he accuses front-runner Renzi of being nothing more than a continuation of the past two decades of politicking, in effect defining Renzi as "Berlusconian."
     
    The outsider running with the backing of the real PD left as well as those many intellectuals longing for genuine and even radical change is Giuseppe "Pippo" Civati, born in Monza in 1975. With a PhD in philosophy from the Milan State University and post-graduate studies in Renaissance humanism, he is a respected historian with a multitude of serious books and papers to his credit. Some are historical-philosophical, others are on Italian politics, such as "Digital Party, the PD of the Future." Cuperlo entered politics during Romano Prodi's 1995 winning campaign against Berlusconi. However, this mid-November Civati commanded at most 10% of pre-congress primary votes, according to the head of the PD organization. This leaves the real confrontation between Renzi and Cuperlo. 
     
    In the largest sense this PD convention assumes particular importance because it is a giant step toward recreating a progressive party that will shed its last vestiges of the old-line Communist party. Officially it died with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, but its rhetoric did not die with it, and in recent years the party has stumbled as a result. It's worth recalling that for the four postwar decades after the birth of Italian democracy in 1948 the country had two huge ideologically-based political organizations representing two-thirds of the electorate. Faced off against each other were the Christian Democrats, with the open backing of the Church, and the Italian Communist party (PCI), with the open backing of the Soviets--even though under Enrico Berlinguer managed the PCI managed to walk a semi-independent line from Moscow, to the point that at one party congress in Moscow its spokesman was not allowed to speak in the main party hall but only in an outlying gymnasium. Shaking off the vestiges of these four decades has not been easy for either right or left, but it is happening, if belatedly.
     
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  • Op-Eds

    The Politics of Decadence


    This did not have to happen; he could have, and in so doing avoided the  humiliation of the formal vote. He would also have gained precious weeks  in so doing, but he chose not to resign because it would have insinuated his  guilt. Instead until the last minute he has been demanding that President  Giorgio Napolitano concede an amnesty for him. To this the President  explained, again and again, that under the law Berlusconi would first have to request that amnesty, a request Berlusconi refused, once again on grounds  that to do so would imply guilt. Thus the stubborn stalemate ended with his expulsion.


    Until the last minute no one knew for certain whether or not the vote would  take place. And until the last minute his supporters on the floor of the Senate  tried to have declared invalid the anti-corruption law under which he was  convicted. The Severino Law, as it is called, disallows politicians with convictions of two years or more from holding public office. The law was passed in December 2012 with the votes of Berlusconi's own Freedom Party  (PdL), but the party claims that it does not apply to Berlusconi because the  alleged fiscal fraud took place years before that Law existed. The claims of unconstitutionality have not worked, and today Berlusconi's backers resorted  to trying to gain time by appealing, again and again, for a secret ballot on  his expulsion, but were voted down dozens of times. Whatever niceties of  democratic life a secret vote would have meant, it was more important to the  majority that there be no secret horse-trading, no vote buying. This is no arid  debate: judiciary records show that vote buying in Parliament has happened  in the past.


    Turning out today to support Berlusconi were a thousand flag-waving,  cheering fans - some wearing black arm bands of mourning - gathered  outside the building where he rents a large apartment in Rome, Palazzo  Grazioli, a few steps from Piazza Venezia. Braving the 35-degree weather  and biting wind, they listened patiently as he delivered a pep talk in which  he promised to create a series of political clubs in the name of his reborn  Forza Italia party that will fight "for freedom." "We are missionaries of  liberty," he shouted. "I promise that I shall never forget any of you and your  demonstration. Long live Italy, long live Forza Italia, long live freedom!"


    It is perhaps an unfortunate play on words that on Wednesday the Italian  Senate had to vote on Senator Silvio Berlusconi's "decadenza"--that is,  whether or not to disbar him from the Senate, thus stripping away his  parliamentary status and hence some of his continuing legal protections  and his right to run for office. Even in Italian the word also refers to the  expiration of a warantee for, say, a washing machine. But to take the word  n English as related to decadence also gives an idea of an unpleasant situation that has gone on far too long, with Parliament tied up with endless  debates over Berlusconi even as the government should be facing the serious  problems of the economy that afflict the nation. It is time for a sea change  away from decadence and back to the creativity that was a desired hallmark  of earlier postwar politics.


    Silvio Berlusconi has dominated the Italian political scene for a total of  twenty years. So what now? He still commands the loyalty of as many as 7  million voters--much fewer than in the past. After today's expulsion he will  have to face, probably in April, the consequences of his definitive conviction  August 1 for fiscal fraud. He is most definitely not out of politics - on the  contrary, he still hopes somehow to be premier - but in theory will not be  able to run for office. In April point he can choose between accepting house arrest or accepting to perform public service under the control of social  workers. The notion does not please him: a priest's suggesting, "Let him come here and clean our toilets," sent Berlusconi into a fury, saying that he  would not be humiliated in that way.
  • Facts & Stories

    Letta on the Crest of a Wave




    ROME - Stormy seas lie ahead, but for the moment Premier Enrico Letta is riding on the crest of a wave. With the now definitive splintering of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's highly personalized political party, his formally reborn Forza Italia passes into the minority. The split came about because Angelino Alfano, who was Berlusconi's second-in-command in the so-called "Freedom Party" (PdL), successor to the original Forza Italia, with its soccer-game overtones, held firm together with Letta and a group of defectors who included Fabrizio Cicchitto.
     
    This gives the present emergency government, erroneously dubbed the "great entente coalition" (given its inner conflicts to date), sufficient votes in both Chamber of Deputies and Senate to continue to remain in power. Letta hopes to remain in office until at least 2015, and Alfano's defection from Berlusconi gives Letta more than a helping hand. It is a victory for stability which will, with luck, postpone the new national general elections for which Berlusconi has been lobbying. With Alfano now are 26 or 27 deputies and 30 senators. In a future vote of confidence for the government Letta should therefore be able to count on a comfortable 381 votes in the 630-seat Chamber, where the absolute majority is 316, and 168 (172, according to Il Sole-24 Ore) in the 321-seat Senate, where the absolute majority is narrower at 161 votes
     
    Berlusconi himself believes that the PD and Letta personally will emerge from the PD national congress Dec. 8 weakened when the youthful Florentine Mayor Matteo Renzi makes his predicted formal debut onto the national scene. And there is always the possibility that the splinter Alfano group and the Partito Democratico (PD) behind Letta decide to self-destruct in clashes over taxation; the European Union is pressuring Italy to take a much firmer approach upon dealing with its national debt. There is also the divisive question of whether Letta's Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri overstepped ethical and perhaps legal boundaries by intervening on behalf of a friend's daughter in prison. Phone records prove that she did intervene, as she had denied. As a result Cancellieri has been under pressure to resign, but Letta defends her for obscure reasons.
     
    Interestingly, both Alfano and Berlusconi were extraordinarily polite to each other despite the schism. The definitely less than youthful Forza Italia crowd listening to Berlusconi speak in Rome Saturday were shouting, "Traitor!" and "Buffoon!" until he hushed them, saying that he was personally wounded by Alfano, who had been "like a son" to him. (For a few minutes of Berlusconi speaking live, see: http://video.corriere.it/berlusconi-strappo-prima-si-commuove-poi-prende-giro-alfano/173a80ca-4eb2-11e3-80a5-bffb044a7c4e.) "The news [of the defections] gave me great pain," Berlusconi said, alternating between jokes and tears for a talk in which he denounced Communism ("the most criminal ideology in history"), the magistrates "who want to bring the left into power," the EU, the Euro and Angela Merkel equally. "But I'm still an optimist," he said. "We'll keep trying." Toward the end of his 90-minute, emotional oration he seemed overwhelmed and about to pass out, until his doctor stepped forward with a glass of water enriched with whatever one gives to athletes, as the doctor acknowledged. (See: http://video.corriere.it/piccolo-mancamento-berlusconi-palco-roma/441b412e-4eb7-11e3-80a5-bffb044a7c4e)
     
    What does all this mean? "Sad hawks," was one headline. Some here are saying that it's the "archiving" of Berlusconi himself, finally his moment of "autumn leaves falling." Said Paolo Mieli, former editor of Corriere della Sera and anything but a rabid leftist, speaking in a Saturday talk show, "For the past 20 years Berlusconi has been losing bits chunks of his support. This is just one more. It really means the end is near."
     
    After announcing the definitive split and creation of a new group being called "New Center Right" (Nuovo Centro Destra, name which Berlusconi mocked as insipid) Alfano came directly Saturday afternoon to a jam-packed press conference at the Foreign Press Association in Rome. "We made our decision when we saw that the PdL was opting for early elections," he said. The separation and creation of a new Parliamentary group had been "painful and embittering," but necessary, "because we love Italy." He also said that he continued to have "the deepest affection" for his former mentor, and predicted that at some future time, since both are political conservatives, he would not rule out the possibility for a new coalition together. He also announced that the new group would not vote to have Berlusconi stripped of his senatorial status.
     
    If anyone was exulting over all this, they were brought down to earth by the economy, which continues to pose a grave problem. The EU has rapped Letta's knuckles for allegedly overly optimistic predictions for 2014. Some troubling statistics show that all is not well: Codacons, the consumer association, is predicting that the austerity Christmas shopping will be down by 7.5% while prices rise because of a hike in the VAT tax. Spending on clothing and shoes is down by 11% this year over last year, travel down by 8.5% and spending in restaurants and cafes, by 8% this year over last year. And spending on foodstuffs has dropped by $2.7 billion annually, according to a new study by the Istituto dell'Unioncamere, an association of chambers of commerce, crafts and agriculture.
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  • Facts & Stories

    London Applauds Italian Fashions


     LONDON - For well over half a century Italian fashions have loomed large on the international stage, which is how I happened to be seated one evening in 1974 directly behind Gina Lollobrigida and Audrey Hepburn at Valentino's swanky atelier near the Spanish Steps in Rome. I was covering high fashion week for Reuters, and, this being the Swinging Seventies, Valentino was king of fashion. But if I was being flattered with a seat in Row Two for the first time (usually I was tucked away invisibly in the back), the royals of fashion, beginning with Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland, were already established in their customary thrones of honor in Row One.


    London is planning to honor those halcyon Italian fashion years with a major exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum that opens April 5 and will continue through July 2014. Called "The Glamour of Italian Fashion 1945-2014," it is the first major exhibition on the subject and puts on view some 100 outfits and accessories by, among others, Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Missoni, Prada, Pucci, Versace and, naturally, Valentino.


    The show, sponsored by Bulgari and curated by Sonnet Stanfill (she worked two years in its preparation), honors the contribution of Italian design, textiles and craftsmanship in the post-World War II resurgence of Italy, its economy and its image. To achieve this meant that, beginning in the Fifties, the diverse centers from Milan to Rome, Florence and Naples involved in fashion--which is to say leather craft, textile design and manufacture, tailoring and the introduction of knitwear as respectable fashion--had to work together for the first time. It began with the twice-yearly high fashion showings in Palazzo Pitti in Florence, which paved the way for the development of what was called high fashion ready-to-wear.


    This was also the Rome of Fellini and Cinecitta', and attracted Hollywood stars like Elizabeth Taylor, who did her jewelry shopping at Bulgari. On exhibit is a diamond and emerald necklace from Bulgari which Richard Burton gave Elizabeth as a wedding gift, and which she wore with her costume for a Carnevale party in Venice. And, as the London fashion press reminds us, when Marilyn Monroe died she was buried in one of her favorite frocks by Emilio Pucci.


    For many of us multi-tasking foreign journalists (and they included men as well as women), to cover the six Italian fashion weeks in Rome, Florence and Milan came as a welcome respite from our following, and trying to understand, the profoundly disturbing political terrorism that also marked the Seventies. We Anglo-Saxon journalists tried hard to make sense of why there was at one and the same time such creativity and such destruction. "It's simple," an Italian journalist told me. "Half of Italy creates, the other half destroys."


    Of course this was not true; the destructive portion was extraordinarily small but noisy while the creative portion was huge. Our job was to help present this creativity to the world. And this is why my heart leaped at the headline in the London Evening Standard on November 6, which read, "Dazzling V & A show to celebrate the best of Italian style." We were there, and we were dazzled.


    We also had a silly but amusing ritual. Mila Schon always showed interesting color combinations in her outfits, and so we made a point of going out for tea after the Mila Schon exhibition in Florence and ordering cakes frosted in the colors of her show. An easy year was when all was orange and chocolate, but when her colors were more complicated, we were in trouble to find an appropriate frosting. After the evening shows I would have to rush back to a hotel to write at midnight and then send the urgent text by teletype or, more often, dictate it.


    Today the Italian fashion industry is challenged by the mega-production of, especially, China. But here in London curator Stanfill predicts that in the long run Italian fashions will continue to appeal to those who demand quality.


    Some confirmation of this came from Vincenzaoro, a showcase for the Italian jewelry industry in September. A problem is that gold prices have risen, making the finely finished product which is an Italian speciality more expensive, and the number of buyers dropped from 18,000 from to 16,000. However, for the first time in two years sales rose in money terms by 6% while the quantity of sales was up by 2.6%, according to the official Italian statistics-gathering agency ISTAT. Better still, jewelry exports soared by 12% over the past two years. The majority of buyers were Italian, but almost two-thirds came from 110 other countries.
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    Talking Money


    ROME - Wherever one goes these days, the topic is money. But even in the midst of recession there are encouraging signs of financial life. Although the GNP is expected to hit a minus 1.8% by year end, Istat, the statistics-gathering agency, has just predicted a 0.7% rise for 2014.

    Elsewhere too there are positive notes. On her amusing blog for the financial daily Il Sole/24 Ore, Paola Bottelli asked readers how much they are willing to spend for a pair of jeans. The answers poured in. A few came from cost-cutters: "My pair that cost E40 ($55 or so) have given me great satisfaction." But others were happy to spend far more. "My top price would be E150." "Depends on the model. In my closet are some for E140, for E220, for E200 and E150." Another was willing to pay E250 on grounds that, if the wearer is willing to pay that for other trousers, why not for jeans?

     
    Fashion pros joining in the discussion spoke of production, promotion and payroll costs. Besides, one complained, "Europe has just tacked on an additional 26% customs duty for denim for women's jeans, making the total tax on denim 38%." But if denim has risen in price, so have other fabrics: "Have you noticed that the price of cashmere has risen by 10% and another 20% hike is expected?"

     
    In the end blogger Bottelli showed her hand. "Okay, now tell me why, when just one year ago I asked the same question, almost all of you replied that you would not pay more than E100 ($135)." To this, there were few answers. Blue denim is the new black.

     
    Another telling money tale is the extraordinary success of a new movie which is essentially about money and is also making it hand over fist. Actor Checco Zalone, noted for his earlier success "Zelig," stars in "Sole a Catinelle" (more or less "Drowning in Sunshine"). In its debut showing this past holiday weekend, the film earned a record $25 million. (For its trailer, already seen by 3 million, see >>>)

     
    The setting: the Italian Northeast. The plot: a man who learned his values from years of humble work in swanky hotels longs for luxuries. As a result he overspent and finds himself in debt, even as his wife loses her job and becomes a labor organizer. The father promises to take his 10-year-old son on a fantastic journey if the son gets good grades at school. The boy doesn't, but the trip is necessary, for Papa wants to shake down relatives. The two set out for the deep Italian South, to the Molise. When they arrive they find that the relatives are mostly dead. On their return they meet the rich Italy Papa had imagined.

     
    In other words, the film about having no money is the biggest cinema money-maker in town.
    Turning from reel to real life, the latest news is that over the past seven months a 7-year Italian treasury bond (Btp) has been attracting investors from the UK, France and Germany, to the point that foreign investments in the Italian state bond have earned E32.3 billion ($43.6 billion), according to Bankitalia. Why? An answer comes from Francesco Perilli, chief administrator of Equita Sim (cited in La Repubblica Nov. 4). "There's the sense that Italian politics have undergone a shift in generations, and confidence in the staying power of the government." Improvement in the public debt is another factor, and "renewed confidence in the executive's willingness to respect European commitments." Successful Snam and Beni Stabili emissions suggest that some corporate bond sales are also improving.
    Nobody is pretending that all is well, of course, but at least there is disagreement over just how bad the situation is. An association of small businesses made big noises last week by forecasting that the tax revision underway, which curbs state property taxes on first homes while allowing local governments to boost service taxes, will cost the business community upwards of a billion euros. Economics Minister Fabrizio Saccomani contests this, saying that, on the contrary, the new taxation system will bring savings of a billion euros.

     
    Another area where Italy can boast is in exports of agricultural products. Already second in Europe for farm exports including wine and olive oil, the agro-alimentary sector exports surged in the first quarter this year by 6.6%. At the same time, despite dismal employment figures elsewhere, employment in the sector rose during that same period by a gratifying 12% in Central Italy and by 2% in the North, for a total increment of 0.7%.

     
    Privatization as a remedy is also in the winds. Saccomanni has suggested privatizing a part of the state-own radio-TV network Rai; the TV portion would remain public, however. In addition, the Government is considering privatizing 4.3% of the publicly-owned energy agency ENI, according to Reuters news agency.

     
    The politicians too are talking money--and it was about time--because the Letta cabinet's proposed budget, called the "Stability Law," is now up for debate in Parliament beginning Nov. 11 in Commission. Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin backs the bill because, "This is the first time in ten years that there will be no cuts in the national health service. " Saccomani says, "We won't be growing like China, but we will have a sustainable growth level of around 2% a year."

     
    Letta hopes to have it passed before the full Senate votes on stripping Silvio Berlusconi of his senatorial status. This may not be easy. Despite the positive signs, the bill has broad opposition from a somewhat unholy coalition. The right, led by Berlusconi, hopes to use it to bring down the government so as to provoke new elections. On the left the trade unions oppose the bill because of fear of higher taxes and the relatively small wage increase (circa E40, or $55 monthly) the bill promises. Another criticism is that taxes on financial income, supposed to rise by 2% to 22%, have been left as they were.
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    Is it Really Heartbreak Italy?


     
    ROME - The other day the Italy aficionado and reporter Frank Bruni published a long and thoughtful article in the New York Times under the title "Italy Breaks Your Heart." After his most recent visit to Italy--Milan, the Marche--he concluded that: "Italy is what happens when a country knows full well what its problems are but can’t summon the discipline and will to fix them. It’s what happens when political dysfunction grinds on and on and good governance becomes a mirage, a myth, a joke."

     
    It would be hard not to agree with that, but to me his words raised another question: are Italians as heart-broken as Bruni says he is? The answer is no. The Italians I meet and speak with every day--they include the friendly rubbish sweepers encountered while walking the dogs early in the morning, the well dressed ladies in the cafes, the bank officers in Rome, the reporters and TV producers we see professionally, the weekenders visiting from the North of Italy, the gifted chefs, the olive pickers in our garden--are just plain angry.  They are angry at each other, they are angry at Silvio Berlusconi, his obfuscations, his re-invention of Forza Italia, his trying to shove his shy daughter Marina into becoming his political clone (no fool, she refuses). And they are angry when he says, shamelessly: "In case there are elections I feel it my duty to remain in the front lines, to commit myself directly," he said. Might it not be more his duty to accept a high court decision and show respect for the justice system? "I have a special relationship with the Italians who, like me, fear that the left can go into government," he added. What? The left is already in government, in a coalition which Berlusconi himself approved, with Berlusconi's own people whom he is now disavowing because they prefer not to bring down the government in the middle of an economic crisis which, we are promised, will improve next year or maybe the year after that.

     
    On the left they are angry with the old guard of the Partito Democratico (PD), meaning cigar-smoking Pier Luigi Bersani, party secretary for four years, and his predecessor Massimo D'Alema. Who can ignore that countless PD sections have grossly inflated their membership rosters so as to give certain candidates more votes in that party's much-postponed convention Dec. 10? And they are angry at Nikki Vendola, whose SEL is the PD ally in government, because he is being drawn into a local scandal.

     
    Some are angry with Premier Enrico Letta. Despite his managing to hold the situation together in an uphill struggle every moment of every day, his popularity has sunk to around 33%. They are far more furious with his predecessor, former Premier Mario Monti, who has shown a striking inability to grasp the simplest elements of political life--and who has even blamed the gift of a dog for some of his woes. 

     
    Some are angry with the personal values their children have learned from Mediaset TV sleaze. Many are outraged that 40% of their young people have little hope of finding a paying job when certain RAI TV hosts like Bruno Vespa have a take-home salary, paid by the state, on the order of $1 million a year. As one irate viewer put it, "They force you, coerce you, to pay a yearly fee to see TV shows at the limit of indecency and ridicule, programs for the brainless demented....They are paid like Croesus and shamelessly enjoy the good life, despite the crisis and the lack of work for the majority."

     
    They are angry at their government, when it was announced that Spain is emerging from the recession but that Italy is not. They are angry at Justice Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, who intervened to obtain a release from prison of the troubled daughter of the crooked businessman, octogenarian Salvatore Ligresti. Cancellieri defends herself, saying that she did so for humanitarian reasons (the woman, anorexic, was at serious risk). Fair enough, but if Cancellieri is so humanitarian minded, why has she not done the same for other sufferers in Italian prisons?

     
    A few are angry even at Mr. Anger himself, Beppe Grillo, whose showing in the polls has declined (if only slightly) even as he continues to exploit the widespread anger. Grillo and Grillismo are under attack within his own movement, in which he expelled two of his senators for having introduced a motion asking for the abolition of clandestine immigration as crime.
    Most of all they are angry with the evidence of the corruption that has become endemic in Italy in the past two decades.

     
    Small wonder, then, that the largest political party in Italy remains, as of this week, the one-third of Italians (33.3%) who tell the pollsters that they will abstain in any future election. Of these, a small percentage says they will turn in blank ballots; the others are undecided. These alienated voters far outweigh both the PdL-Forza Italia, with 25.4% (in decline from previous weeks according to various polling companies) and the PD, with somewhere around 32%.

     
    These polls are being closely watched because the Letta government continues to be at risk of collapse under the weight of the forthcoming vote in the Senate, expected to strip Berlusconi of his status as senator. At this point the Berlusconi hawks are already in his reborn party, Forza Italia, while the hold-outs from his PdL are stubbornly trying to continue to support the emergency government headed by Letta. Can they succeed? That is anybody's guess.
    Amid all this anger there was also a cheery moment, fortunately. This week's good news was that the forthcoming (though in no hurry) Senate vote on Berlusconi will not be secret. Heads can be counted, meaning that, to put it crudely, it is now more difficult for vote-buying to take place. Those objecting to this roll-call vote say it undermines democracy; those supporting it say that, if a politician disagrees with his party, he should change allegiance openly and above-board.
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    Silvio and Sophia, Two Styles


    ROME - He was surely expecting it, but when the latest judiciary act involving Silvio Berlusconi arrived on Oct. 23, by all accounts it nevertheless came as una tegola in testa--a roof tile dropped on his head. This latest incrimination, which will bring Berlusconi to trial before a penal court on Feb. 11, is for vote-buying and is no less serious than the others (for a summary of these, see below)--on the contrary. The vote that was bought helped to sink like a stone the center-left government headed by economist Romano Prodi. After achieving a majority in the Chamber of Deputies on Jan. 23, 2008, Prodi was defeated in the Senate in a close vote the following day, when only 156 voted in favor of his government, and 161 against.

     

    Prodi was obliged to resign, precipitating the end of the legislature and the calling of new elections held that April. In those elections Berlusconi's Partito della Liberta' prevailed, and Berlusconi became Premier. Helping to bring down the Prodi government was the pudgy Senator Sergio De Gregorio, who had been elected in 2006 on the ticket of the left-leaning Italia dei Valori (IDV). Headed by former magistrate Antonio Di Pietro, this party was part of the center-left coalition. The right celebrated Prodi's downfall by eating mortadella sandwiches, in a presumed insulting reference to Prodi's North Italian background.


    The real insult came, however, the month after the April 2008 elections, neatly won by Berlusconi. At that point, suddenly De Gregorio switched hats, moving from the IDV to return to the Senate representing Berlusconi's party. (It is still, incidentally, the PdL albeit he hopes to reconvert it to Forza Italia as soon as possible, possibly in order to regain more control over it from Angelino Alfano, his newly independent second-in-command). Many here believe that De Gregorio's vote was crucial in removing Prodi from the political scene and, even more seriously, in provoking costly new elections three years ahead of the normally scheduled five years.

     

    In 2010 a Neapolitan court opened an investigation into De Gregorio, together with the editor of the vestiges of the once glorious Italian Socialist daily L'Avanti!, Valter Lavitola. There can be little doubt that De Gregorio's vote was purchased because he has admitted in court that he received a series of payments over time, including one of E500,000 dumped directly onto his desk in the Senate. Lavitola allegedly was Berlusconi's mediator who specialized in "sensitive missions" of this ilk, to the point that he acted for years as if he were "a statesman in incognito," in the words of that indictment. Already La Vitola has been sentenced to 3 years and 8 months in prison by Italy's high Cassations court for misappropriation of Avanti! funds. Since those glory days De Gregorio too has spent time in jail and is quoted in the Italian press as advising Berlusconi to "withdraw from the political scene. Set yourself and the country free."

     

    The February date in court is only one of those pending. In Milan a court will decide on the length of time he is to be prohibited from holding public office because of his tax fraud definitive sentence. In Bari he is under investigation for allegedly having paid a sleazy businessman money for organizing what the press here is calling "escorts" for parties. An appeals court in Milan, where he has already been sentenced to one year, is to decide on a case in which Berlusconi's people allegedly listened, improperly, to phone taps involving dealings of a bank, Unipol, and Piero Fassino of the Partito Democratico. There the judges called the illegal phone tap a "Christmas present" to Berlusconi from businessmen, who offered the tap to him in hopes of a helping hand in a business deal in Romania. Not least, within weeks the Senate in Rome must vote on whether or not to strip Berlusconi of his Senate seat.

     

    Why should we care? Because, with this last blow, Berlusconi by all accounts is ever more outraged at what he calls judiciary persecution, and is taking out his anger once again by threatening to bring down the government even though his party remains divided between the aggressive hawks who want to see elections by February and the more cautious doves. The PdL has a host of pebbles in its shoes, not least the election of left- leaning Rosi Bindi as head of the Anti-Mafia Commission of Parliament, a post without a chairperson--and hence without activity--for a shocking eight months because of the rift between the two parties of the coalition headed by Premier Enrico Letta. During the fraught election process the PdL commission members stormed out because against Bindi's election. Moreover, they said, they would not be back.

     

    Berlusconi's nightmare remains fear of prison even though it is unlikely that he will ever see a day behind bars. Coincidentally on the same day the new vote-buying trial was confirmed, the Italian supreme court, the Cassations, found in favor of Sophia Loren, who has now won her decades-long quarrel with the government over alleged non-payment of taxes. In fact, because of this La Loren spent a short period in prison in 1982. Asked later how she felt about it, she said simply, "When you hear a door clang and a key turn it locked, and you don't have the key, it's tough."


    Now there's style. As her experience showed, for some, there truly is equality before the law.

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